Come all ye self-styled chefs and kitchen users, we must talk.

Zanchito wrote:

Wow, amazing! I love cooking. Currently, my beef is with non-stick pans, they end up being sticky anyway. Has anyone tried titanium coated pans? I've heard very good things (tm) about them! (Not a fan of cast iron, I can't be bothered with the maintenance and precise temperature control).

I can offer true spanish recipes in return! I'll post sangría, gazpacho and spanish omelette ("tortilla española", so you can sound like a true native when cooking. Add a generous dose of swearing while you're at it and you'll be as authentic as it gets) when I have some more time.

I hadn't even heard of titanium coated, nice. I have three cast irons, a set of cuisinart stainless, a porcelain coated cast iron dutch oven (a real one, pointy bits on the lid) and a single nonstick egg pan (ONLY for eggs).

Zanchito wrote:

Wow, amazing! I love cooking. Currently, my beef is with non-stick pans, they end up being sticky anyway.

It's funny; non-stick pans invariably give me more trouble than normal ones. And they're as fussy in their own way as cast iron. Meanwhile, if I get your pans nice and hot and use plenty of oil, my normal pan is more non-stick than non-stick.

Inspired by this NPR piece, I cooked beef heart last night. It had been in my freezer for months; I had been anxious about screwing it up, but it turned out to be pretty easy. (The heart was mostly pre-cleaned, too, which helped.) I largely followed the recipe above for searing (no watermelon salad, though). I did add bacon grease to lube things up. (When unsure, always add bacon grease.) It had the appearance of unbelievably lean flank steak. Mostly tasted like that, too, but with a bit more iron.

A+, would eat again. It makes a lot of food, too; three of us ate fair portions, and ate a little over half of it. If you can get your hands on it, it's well worth your time.

As for mandolines.

Though of plastic body, the V-Slicer has been durable and has stayed nice and sharp after almost 10 years. But even with the grates, I find it of limited purpose for dicing.

Frankly, I find a sharp set of knives serves me better. This of course means you are handy and speedy enough with a knife to get good, uniform slices. It also gets to my inheriting a prejudice of small purpose kitchen appliances.

pgroce wrote:
Zanchito wrote:

Wow, amazing! I love cooking. Currently, my beef is with non-stick pans, they end up being sticky anyway.

It's funny; non-stick pans invariably give me more trouble than normal ones. And they're as fussy in their own way as cast iron. Meanwhile, if I get your pans nice and hot and use plenty of oil, my normal pan is more non-stick than non-stick.

Inspired by this NPR piece, I cooked beef heart last night. It had been in my freezer for months; I had been anxious about screwing it up, but it turned out to be pretty easy. (The heart was mostly pre-cleaned, too, which helped.) I largely followed the recipe above for searing (no watermelon salad, though). I did add bacon grease to lube things up. (When unsure, always add bacon grease.) It had the appearance of unbelievably lean flank steak. Mostly tasted like that, too, but with a bit more iron.

A+, would eat again. It makes a lot of food, too; three of us ate fair portions, and ate a little over half of it. If you can get your hands on it, it's well worth your time.

Interesting. I will ask them to include it in my next cow order. Any other organs I should ask for? Liver is out of the question, I won't even allow it in my house. And tongue and eyes just weird me out.

JC wrote:

Hey Maq: I use this one and love it. All mandolins are pretty much the same so my only suggestion would be to stay away from the ones constructed of plastic.
http://www.oxo.com/p-543-chefs-mandoline-slicer.aspx

I was eyeing that one up but it's definitely on the christmas list rather than the "buy now" list.

ibdoomed wrote:
pgroce wrote:
Zanchito wrote:

Wow, amazing! I love cooking. Currently, my beef is with non-stick pans, they end up being sticky anyway.

It's funny; non-stick pans invariably give me more trouble than normal ones. And they're as fussy in their own way as cast iron. Meanwhile, if I get your pans nice and hot and use plenty of oil, my normal pan is more non-stick than non-stick.

Inspired by this NPR piece, I cooked beef heart last night. It had been in my freezer for months; I had been anxious about screwing it up, but it turned out to be pretty easy. (The heart was mostly pre-cleaned, too, which helped.) I largely followed the recipe above for searing (no watermelon salad, though). I did add bacon grease to lube things up. (When unsure, always add bacon grease.) It had the appearance of unbelievably lean flank steak. Mostly tasted like that, too, but with a bit more iron.

A+, would eat again. It makes a lot of food, too; three of us ate fair portions, and ate a little over half of it. If you can get your hands on it, it's well worth your time.

Interesting. I will ask them to include it in my next cow order. Any other organs I should ask for? Liver is out of the question, I won't even allow it in my house. And tongue and eyes just weird me out.

I'm with you on the liver. Kidney is weird in a different way from liver, but in general I don't like it much either. (Though I'm probably going to give them another chance.) I didn't even know people cooked eyes. The only other thing I can think of that you left out is "Rocky Mountain oysters." (My dad used to raise cattle, and every time we castrated steers someone would come out of the hills and take them home to eat. Ick.)

I would suggest you challenge your aversion to tongue, though. Maybe get a lengua taco from your neighborhood Hispanic market?

If I'm slaughtering a cow, the odd bits I'm interested in are bones, particularly marrow bones and oxtail for soup.

As an aside, my wife ordered half a hog that's supposed to come in this week. I'm excited to see whether we get anything weird and interesting. I will totally cook pig skin and trotters, if they give me half a chance.

Agreed with pgroce, beef tongue is worth trying at least once. I'm short on time at the moment but I'll try to dig up the recipe I used, from the book Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal. Oh, and marrow too, mmmm....

You want Fergus Henderson for all that stuff.

ibdoomed wrote:
Zanchito wrote:

Wow, amazing! I love cooking. Currently, my beef is with non-stick pans, they end up being sticky anyway. Has anyone tried titanium coated pans? I've heard very good things (tm) about them! (Not a fan of cast iron, I can't be bothered with the maintenance and precise temperature control).

I can offer true spanish recipes in return! I'll post sangría, gazpacho and spanish omelette ("tortilla española", so you can sound like a true native when cooking. Add a generous dose of swearing while you're at it and you'll be as authentic as it gets) when I have some more time.

I hadn't even heard of titanium coated, nice. I have three cast irons, a set of cuisinart stainless, a porcelain coated cast iron dutch oven (a real one, pointy bits on the lid) and a single nonstick egg pan (ONLY for eggs).

I'd never heard of titanium coated either; I don't know that I'd want them though. I have a spork made from titanium and there's not much heat transfer from it.

On Mandolines, if you're exceptionally skilled with a knife and can produce perfectly sliced anything, use knives. That said, in years of watching food network and cooking channel, I've never seen a chef that didn't use a mandoline. Even Alton Brown, the great hater of uni-taskers uses a mandoline for those applications.

Cyranix wrote:

Agreed with pgroce, beef tongue is worth trying at least once. I'm short on time at the moment but I'll try to dig up the recipe I used, from the book Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal. Oh, and marrow too, mmmm....

Tacos de lengua, nuff said.

AnimeJ wrote:

On Mandolines, if you're exceptionally skilled with a knife and can produce perfectly sliced anything, use knives. That said, in years of watching food network and cooking channel, I've never seen a chef that didn't use a mandoline. Even Alton Brown, the great hater of uni-taskers uses a mandoline for those applications.

I've got decent knife skills and generally use a knife for most things but there's no getting away from the fact that a mandoline is the right tool for the job.

KingGorilla wrote:

Tacos de lengua, nuff said.

Spoiler:

Also: cabeza

I need to remember this thread for when I cook next. Or remember to take pictures at least.

ibdoomed wrote:

Interesting. I will ask them to include it in my next cow order. Any other organs I should ask for? Liver is out of the question, I won't even allow it in my house. And tongue and eyes just weird me out.

Hello. Welcome to my wheelhouse. Have a seat and help yourself to the offal hors d'oerves.

Tongue is fricking delicious, but preparing it will likely weird you out. "Skinning" a cow's tongue is precisely as gross as it sounds. If you can get your butcher to skin it for you, it's worth having a go at, although you might also need a ham-press to make it work.

Sweetbreads are labor-intensive (soak in milk overnight, press flat for a while, soak in milk again, then cook), but pretty nice, and as with most offal, it's a unique flavor. Well worth doing out of sheer novelty - they're a rarity on a dinner plate in this part of the world.

I was unimpressed with bulls testicles (a.k.a. Rocky Mountain oysters), they were kind of bland, but that could be that I didn't do a great job of cooking them. Also, see the same issues with skinning a tongue. Skinning tennis-ball sized nutsacks was mildly upsetting.

Chicken hearts are bloody amazing. And cheap too.

Lambs kidneys fried with bacon is superb, although the smell of them can be offputting to some people (my wife claims they smell like I'm cooking pee). I much prefer them to pig kidneys, which have a sharper, less delicate taste, and tend to be tougher to boot.

EDIT - ooh, and venison hearts are a gamier version of beef hearts. My wife made stuffed venison hearts for us on Valentines Day a couple of years ago, which is totally the Jonman variant of romantic chocolates

Zanchito wrote:

. Has anyone tried titanium coated pans? I've heard very good things (tm) about them!

I've had a titanium-ceramic coated non-stick pan for coming on 10 years, and it's been a workhorse, but is on it's last legs now. It performed great, you can allegedly use metal implements in - the coating is hard enough that it won't get damaged. Although we tended to use wood and plastic in it out of sheer habit.

The downside is that it was god-awful expensive, but I don't know if that applies across the board, or we just bought a fancy-pants one.

AnimeJ wrote:

On Mandolines, if you're exceptionally skilled with a knife and can produce perfectly sliced anything, use knives. That said, in years of watching food network and cooking channel, I've never seen a chef that didn't use a mandoline. Even Alton Brown, the great hater of uni-taskers uses a mandoline for those applications.

I would say that you have to be incredibly skilled with a knife to get anywhere near the same consistency of cut as with a mandolin, especially when going for very fine slices. There's some things that benefit from that consistency - our mandolin gets used most often when a recipe calls for thin slice of potato e.g. potato gratin.

That's just offal.

Also, in a professional kitchen there is a time and a place for both a good French knife and a mandoline. Each is versatile and does specific things the other can't.

For a mandolin, I prefer Captain Corelli's.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

For a mandolin, I prefer Captain Corelli's.

IMAGE(http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/20523091.jpg)

I do feel bad.

Our actual mandolin is Pampered Chef.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I do feel bad.

Our actual mandolin is Pampered Chef.

I use this and a knife.

MultiChop

Gah, I fail at linking... wth...

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I do feel bad.

Our actual mandolin is Pampered Chef.

Ours too. It has it brief moments of glory for light duty tasks, but overall, I would not recommend.

ibdoomed wrote:

I use this and a knife.

MultiChop

Ohh, that's nice. I don't know why, but for some odd reason, I was expecting this:

IMAGE(http://www.telemarketing.gr/files/images/products/tzor695.jpg)

You're gonna love my nuts.

brouhaha wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

I do feel bad.

Our actual mandolin is Pampered Chef.

Ours too. It has it brief moments of glory for light duty tasks, but overall, I would not recommend.

Yeah, it just feels... not too solid. There's been many times where I've tried to slice a potato and it got stuck.

We've got a newer model pampered chef mandolin, and haven't had any issues with it.

"Skinning" a cow's tongue is precisely as gross as it sounds.

My father tried serving cow tongue to us when we were young. He didn't know it needed to be peeled.

We ate it. Once. If he'd ever tried to serve that to us again, I'm not sure he'd have survived the attempt. That was one of the worst dinner experiences I've ever had, and I've always been pretty liberal about trying new foods.

On a less appalling note: I figured out a really good use for the small ceramic knife I got in the pair. The little one is absolutely outstanding as a steak knife. It's not serrated, but it doesn't need it. At all. Cutting cooked steak with that thing is probably easier than cutting butter with a hot knife. It's like it's barely even there, even with a big honking Slab O' Dead Cow.

After you braise it the stuff comes right off and it is no different than peeling the skin off of chicken.

Working with a bunch of candy asses up in this mother.

And Malor. Does it work well even on tougher cuts like Round aka Family steaks?

KingGorilla wrote:

After you braise it the stuff comes right off and it is no different than peeling the skin off of chicken.

Working with a bunch of candy asses up in this mother.

And Malor. Does it work well even on tougher cuts like Round aka Family steaks?

Candy asses! It's on now buddy.

----------

me: Yo, Mr. Farmer cow dealer.
Cow Dealer: Hey man, what's up?
me: You have any baby cows I can buy live to slaughter myself and rip the tongue out to eat raw?
Cow Dealer: Sure!

ibdoomed wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

After you braise it the stuff comes right off and it is no different than peeling the skin off of chicken.

Working with a bunch of candy asses up in this mother.

And Malor. Does it work well even on tougher cuts like Round aka Family steaks?

Candy asses! It's on now buddy.

----------

me: Yo, Mr. Farmer cow dealer.
Cow Dealer: Hey man, what's up?
me: You have any baby cows I can buy live to slaughter myself and rip the tongue out to eat raw?
Cow Dealer: Sure!

Anyone have a good recipe for candied asses?

My anaconda don't want none. It doesn't like peaches.